Tagged: Science Fiction Writers of America

Remember a while back when I said I supported John Scalzi over Michael Capobianco for president of SFWA, and that I might have to throw my hat into the ring as SFWA VP? Reactionary stuff like this from the new SFWA VP, Andrew Burt, is the reason why. Take it away, Cory Doctorow:

"The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public to share text files with one another in much the same way that Flickr allows its users to share pictures.

"Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher’s bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my own Creative Commons-licensed novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom."

"The list of works to be removed was sent by "epiracy@sfwa.org" on August 17, described as works by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg that had been uploaded without permission and were infringing on copyright. In a followup email on August 23, SFWA Vice President Andrew Burt noted that the August 17 list wasn’t "idle musing, but a DMCA notice." […]

"This implies that Robert Silverberg and the Asimov estate have asked SFWA to police their copyrights for them, but it’s important to note that many of the other authors whose work was listed in the August 17 email did not nominate SFWA to represent them. Indeed, I have told Vice President Burt on multiple occasions that he may not represent me as a rightsholder in negotiations with Amazon, and other electronic publishing venues.

"More importantly, many of the works that were listed in the takedown were written by the people who’d posted them to Scribd — these people have been maligned and harmed by SFWA, who have accused them of being copyright violators and have caused their material to be taken offline. These people made the mistake of talking about and promoting science fiction — by compiling a bibliography of good works to turn kids onto science fiction, by writing critical or personal essays that quoted science fiction novels, or by discussing science fiction. SFWA — whose business is to promote science fiction reading — has turned readers into collateral damage in a campaign to make Scribd change its upload procedures.

"Specifically, in the Aug 23 email, SFWA Vice President Andrew Burt demands that Scribd require its uploaders to swear on pain of perjury that the works they are uploading do not infringe copyright. SFWA has taken it upon itself to require legal oaths of people who want to publish any kind of thought, document, letter, jeremiad, story or rant on Scribd. Not just "pirates." Not just people writing about science fiction, or posting material by SFWA members — SFWA is asking that anyone writing anything for publication on Scribd take this oath of SFWA’s devising."

"Ironically, by sending a DMCA notice to Scribd, SFWA has perjured itself by swearing that every work on that list infringed a copyright that it represented. Since this is not the case, SFWA has exposed itself to tremendous legal liability. The DMCA grants copyright holders the power to demand the removal of works without showing any evidence that these works infringe copyright, a right that can amount to de facto censorship when exercised without due care or with malice. The courts have begun to recognize this, and there’s a burgeoning body of precedent for large judgements against careless, malicious or fraudulent DMCA notices — for example, Diebold was ordered to pay $150,000 125,000 for abusing the DMCA takedown process."

As the saying goes, read the whole thing. And the comments thread.

It all started when Dr. Howard V. Hendrix, current VP of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, delivered a rant about people giving away their works for free on the Internets,

I’m… opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free.  A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they’re just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they’re undercutting those of us who aren’t giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work.

Since more and more of SFWA is built around such electronically mediated networking and connection based venues, and more and more of our membership at least tacitly blesses the webscabs (despite the fact that they are rotting our organization from within) — given my happily retrograde opinions, I felt I was not the president who would provide SFWAns the "net time" they seemed to want at this point in the organization’s development, or who would bless the contraction of our industry toward monopoly, or who would give imprimatur to the downward spiral that is converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch. 

As you would expect, this met with a certain amount of derision, head-shaking, and laughter.

First there was John Scalzi, who’s already stirring things up in SFWA with a write-in candidacy that could very well win, pointing out how well giving stuff away has worked for him. And Cory Doctorow. And Charlie Stross. And so on and so on. And adding that "It’s appalling that a standing Vice President of SFWA is calling a rather large chunk of his constituency backstabbing scum."

Then Jo Walton got into the act, declaring today to be International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, "the day when pixel-stained technopeasants everywhere are stretching and smiling and putting down their technotools to celebrate their existence by releasing their works into the wild, or at least the web." Numerous authors have contributed, and Jo has been keeping a pretty complete list, along with a quick LiveJournal community that sprang up to document the phenomenon.

Of course, the webcomics folks have been doing this sort of thing for a long time now.

I’d like to do my part as well, but  most of my work has been work-for-hire so the selection’s a bit limited. Nevertheless, here’s a story previously published in Urban Nightmares by Baen Books… a story that, irony of ironies, helped get me into SFWA in the first place.

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